Dominic Cummings is wrong to write off the centre ground
The PM’s former chief adviser is too dismissive of moderates and the impact on voters of what goes on in Westminster
Daniel Finkelstein
Tuesday May 11 2021, 6.00pm, The Times
There was a wonderful cartoon of Bill Clinton after he had been in office for about a year. He’s sitting in the Oval Office and leaning back in his chair, with his feet on the desk and talking to a circle of admiring advisers. The caption has him saying: “Here’s what I’d do if were President.”
When Dominic Cummings chipped in after the Hartlepool result to tell us how politics works, it was tempting to see it in the same way. If he actually had the answers, surely he’d be doing it rather than telling us how it should be done.
But it’s not merely a degree of self-recognition that leads me to think that not an adequate response. Cummings is a shrewd observer of the political scene with an impressive record of electoral success. He has actually read the many books he cites, and if you read them too, you generally find they are very good and to the point. And most of all, his record means he has a following, so the things he says matter.
He had two observations on last week’s election results. The first was that much political commentary represents “noise not signal”, in other words it is telling you about things that are mere Westminster gossip and don’t matter. The second was that much commentary imagines there is a centre ground but it (he employed capital letters for emphasis) DOES NOT EXIST.
These points contain much that is absolutely right and of fundamental importance, but also much that is wrong and needs to be rebutted. Let’s begin with what is right.
Much of what happens in Westminster, even things that dominate the news for three weeks, does not make any difference to the outcome of elections. It involves people most voters have never heard of doing things most voters don’t care much about. Even things that temporarily grab people’s attention have often been forgotten by the time voting happens.
Those who create models to predict elections include economic growth in the six months before polling, experience of public services, broad impressions of leadership, the time an incumbent has spent in office and demographic trends. And they might wish to take account of the basic proposition being advanced by each of the major parties. Get Brexit Done, for instance.
They wouldn’t improve their prediction much by adding in public sentiment on the use of the prime minister’s press conference room that took place three years before the election. Cummings is right about this.
He is also right that talk about the centre ground is often sloppy. Voters will accept much more “left wing” economic proposals and much more “right wing” social ones than was commonly thought of as the centre ground. Liberals often confuse the centre ground with their own politics, and they are not the same thing.
So there is wisdom in the Cummings intervention. Yet I don’t think either of his points is completely right.
What happens in Westminster matters, and should matter, because we live in a parliamentary democracy. In order to counter the idea that it is irrelevant I do not need to identify a superior book to those recommended by Cummings. I merely need to observe that if what happened in Westminster were irrelevant to political outcomes, if gossip and personality clashes didn’t matter, then Cummings would still be working in Downing Street rather than leaving with his belongings in a cardboard box.
You can’t develop a theory of politics and how it works that doesn’t have any politicians in it. In order to be successful, you have to navigate not merely the big themes and trends but also human beings with their jealousies and irrationalities.
Does performing at prime minister’s questions alter the outcome of elections? Of course not. But does it help determine whether you can remain leader and get your MPs to rally behind you? Of course it does. So it’s only irrelevant to a leader who doesn’t care if they remain leader. Which isn’t very many of them.
If Cummings actually thought political drama didn’t matter at all, he wouldn’t have starred in so many episodes of it. I also don’t think that Cummings is right to assert that there is no centre ground. And I thought it a particularly odd conclusion to draw from last Thursday’s results.
Naturally you can’t just draw a simple line from left to right and identify a stable set of policies that is right in the middle. Political attitudes are much messier than that and much more contingent. Yet there is still an obvious political advantage to be gained from appearing to voters to be reasonable, moderate and proportionate and to advance propositions that are milder than core voters would desire.
Political parties attract coalitions of voters and the one with the biggest coalition wins. The Conservative Party, for instance, needs to be able to keep enough of its professional and graduate support to accompany the new voters it is attracting.
In a famous paper on the rise of “negative partisanship” Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster demonstrate the trend in the US and elsewhere for negative views of parties to drive voting behaviour. Advancing a policy platform that enthuses your base, even if that base is quite big, will not work politically if it polarises people against you.
If the Cummings theory was completely right, Donald Trump would have won in November. His core vote was broad and loyal and alienated from the Democrats. He’d moved left on the economy and right on immigration. But Joe Biden beat him by pitching himself as more moderate and less alienating. He occupied the centre as no other Democrat could.
Voters also expect policies to work and instinctively distrust politicians who seem to be giving them everything they want. There must be a catch, they thought, when Jeremy Corbyn offered free broadband.
Last week’s elections saw a continuation of the realignment of British politics. But they also favoured incumbents who have delivered results, winning big victories. One of the most striking features of the Tory victors in the north is that they are generally practical rather than ideological. The symbol of the northern conquest, Teesside Mayor Ben Houchen, was re-elected because he gets things done and is seen as almost above politics.
People may be mildly culturally conservative but they want the government to defend their values and history, not actually initiate a culture war. They want competent government that improves life for them rather than wild briefings about who the Tories are going to “do over” next.
Cummings is right. The Tories need to achieve things for people and actually govern rather than entertain people with Westminster arguments. But he’s also wrong. In a parliamentary democracy it matters what happens in parliament. And in any sort of democracy you need the centre in order to win.
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